This seems like a legitimate review?
Out of 505 reviews I only have
one ‘1 star review’ (customer writes it was their error that caused the issue!)
and
6 x 2 star ratings
7 x 3 stars
Everything else is 4 and above, so % wise I’m not going to worry about this. Meanwhile some reviews do indicate changes are required (too small/dark text etc.) majority though user or production error.
Totally agree with this!
With customizable products the reviews can be misleading. I had someone leave a review on a yard sign. They complained that it was a different front on the front of the sign than on the back. So, naturally I checked to make sure I hadn’t somehow goofed on that. Nope. Same font on both sides. My guess is that they customized their sign with a different font, but only did so for one side of the sign assuming it would transfer over to the reverse. So, as a designer I was able to figure out what happened, but the average customer seeing that would assume there was something wonky with the product and move on to another item.
Yes Leah, it is. She writes “I really want my money back”. I confirmed with Zazzle that she was helped further. There is nothing I can do about this low review so I’m not worried. It’s actually the very first review I’ve had that is below 4 stars.
So this is how the new test looks like. One box with comment. Zazzle combined the “About The Product” and “About The Print” into one box.
Hi @alissag , to help avoid this on products that have duplicated sides or text; once you make a text box a template, you can assign the same URL parameter to each duplicated layer. For example, using “text1” in the box below for both front and back text boxes will update/change all connected layers.
Just read your post and checked. Didn’t expect the review to be already published since it always took ages. But it is there. Both on my review page as well as on the product page under Reviews/This design.
Your review only shows the “About the product” text and the “Recommended” and “Shipped on time” points. No “About the print” text anymore, and no “Product Quality”, “Print Quality”, and “Recommended For”.
Edit: Your review is missing in the “Other reviews” section on the product page. With sort set on “newest first” and one third-party review newer than yours.
Since I can’t find any trace on my end of having made this review, I had to search up the product page to see it. There’s a screenshot in previous post of what the input page looked like. What I entered under “Care to provide details?” shows on the posted review as “About the Product”. The posted review includes “Shipped on Time - Yes” and “Recommended - Yes” and while both are true, these were not options anywhere on the review page when submitting it.
Since the changes are still in the making, this will be a (supposedly/hopefully) temporary effect of the usual let’s put it live and see how it works approach we know from other things. I wouldn’t waste time on this.
I got a one star review from a customer for a locket that was defective. When I reached out to customer service asking them if they could make this right with the customer and remove the review since it had nothing to do with the design, I got an email back saying they will look into it and haven’t heard anything since. In the mean time, my store z-rank and sales have tanked. I will try removing the listing all together and see if that helps. It’s very alarming as a seller that we cannot do anything about negative reviews especially when the negative feedback has nothing to do with anything we have control over.
The entire review system needs to be overhauled. It is ludicrous and egregiously unfair to sellers that we can’t respond to openly unfair reviews. Either Zazzle needs to take them off or give us a chance to respond. Ideally, they need to be taken off.
It is really bad! All bad reviews I have are for print issues, shipping delays or defective items. These reviews should go to zazzle or the production partner etc. not stay in my store as they are clearly not reviews that have anything to do with my design skills or service! Yesterday I also noticed one of my collections had 2 star average rating which doesn’t make any sense.
Are there any updates on reviewing the review system, especially regarding collections? I’ve been receiving 1- and 2-star reviews because items were not delivered. Some customers are even accusing me of not sending the items, even though I’m only the designer. This has resulted in my bestselling collection getting unfairly low ratings, which doesn’t seem right.
The review process still allows the customer to ding the seller regarding actions the seller is not responsible for, i.e. printing, shipping, what the customer herself did, etc. If there is full transparency, then the seller should have the chance to respond. Further, the review should be taken off completely when it is not the seller’s fault.
Reviews can hurt the seller. It is exceptionally egregious when it is not the seller’s fault.
For one of my collections I’ve received eleven reviews in total:
7 x five star reviews
1 x four star review:
3 x one star reviews:
The ‘one’ star reviews only spoke about shipping problems/print quality. The ‘four’ star review was happy, but said it looked a bit dark. The design is black & white, so I think it must have been their photo.
My star rating for this collection is now 4.1 - is that based on all the reviews I’ve received?
This collection includes some of my top sellers, so eleven reviews represent a tiny fraction of the total sales!
Only some customers realize that the designer isn’t responsible for the quality of the prints or the shipping process. I often receive messages inquiring if I can assure a delivery date or modify their shipping address.
I think reviews are helpful in many ways, it’s always interesting to see how customers adapt a design. Overall, they’ve been really good. But, it’s frustrating if our ‘Collection’ Star Rating is affected by low ratings for ‘Print Quality’ and ‘Shipping’. I wish there was a separate rating for this. If it was separate, it wouldn’t damage the design or collection rating.
I totally agree with you! Reviews are definitely helpful for getting a sense of what customers think, but it’s so frustrating when issues like print quality or shipping affect the overall collection or design rating. Like you said, it’s not really a reflection of the design itself but more about external factors. It’s especially tough when one customer leaves multiple low ratings due to something out of your control, like shipping delays, and it drags down the entire collection’s rating.
The current system seems to unfairly punish collections, especially for products that are well-loved and have great designs.
I hope they consider updating the system to make it more fair for creators!
Honestly, I don’t believe these improvements will benefit like Zazzle thinks. I believe the benefit comes from excluding Zazzle as the primary responsible one for the quality of the products themselves and the shipping it does. Therefore, not having to address the issues we are tolerating with negative reviews that are based off of these. And technically, those are the ones that are hurting designers [creators]. As far as third-party manufacturers, they’re protected behind Zazzle’s quality assurance standards.
I, for one, have been educated before I buy anything online to review the negative comments first. Why?? To point to who and what is the reason for my purchase online. Do I trust this product and this business who is selling it?
So, to agree with this review process is nothing more than agreeing to shoot myself in the foot. You first did it with our “chat” message system by having customers think we are the producer of these products, and maintain that an auto text message will reflect that “we’re just the designer [creator] and to contact customer service” not mentioning Zazzle by name. And this follows up with not taking any responsibility for the product themselves or the shipping? The two are clearly cya, imho. But, I’m going to take the stand and say, that I think this is wrong. You ARE hurting the designers here. You are putting the blame on us. Take a look at this review. Are you saying that this review is for the 3rd party? If so, why do I have it on MY reviews if this has nothing to do with my design? If this review is for the 3rd party, yet you can hide the 3rd party manufacturer pretty well from the customer, who are you thinking this affects? If it were me, and it’s not, might I suggest that the manufacturer is not hid from customers. So that they can at least make this a FAIR playing field for us as designers and them as 3rd party manufacturers. It’s ultimately Zazzle’s responsibility as well as hurting Zazzle’s reputation as well. And that’s why I have to stand up. I like Zazzle, and I don’t want to see anyone hurt by doing this, but to me it’s definitely going to lead to hurting creators instead of the intended. The 3rd party name is no where even on this. 'Could at least put the name of the 3rd party to ones like this.
For anyone interested…check out this page. https://www.zazzle.com/store/avery_products_corp/reviews?sort=RatingAsc
Maybe designers can think about these one stars if they were more transparent to us.
Just read all of those terrible reviews. I too always look at the negative reviews, in addition to the good ones and any pictures that may be posted on sites by people, to get an overall feel of the item before ordering on any site. But it’s not good reading through alot of those reviews regarding the binders from that company being sold here, or that they’re pointing out the artists regarding quality, print, shipping, etc. as if it’s their mistake and they caused it all, and by saying they’ll never order from them again, etc. Sounds like they think this is like an Etsy or Ebay type place where the artist designer…does it all. I never ordered binders here, but over the years ordered different types of items from Zazzle and most times the print and everything was good, shipping too. If not, customer service was helpful to resolve an issue.
But there are indeed times that a customer may also make their own mistake with any type of item whether with personalization or misspelling error, own poor image quality, etc., and I’ve seen reviews in the marketplace where customers have acknowledged that, and that customer service helped them out and their orders were then received satisfactory or excellent.
But this particular type binder item issue (and any other product with similar problems) should be looked into more, I agree. And it needs to be made much clearer to customers that the artists designers (creators) who do have their own stores within the Marketplace here, do not actually print, manufacturer or ship, etc. any items from Zazzle or its third party vendors. As it is currently, some customers it seems feel like placing the blame on the artists here is the right thing to do for their overall dissatisfaction from printing to shipping of any items, and also think they’re like customer service employees, which of course they’re not. Hope it can all be resolved, especially since I think Zazzle itself is still a great company with so much to offer in the marketplace with their vast array of items to design on, and to personalize.
After looking at both the negative reviews AND the positive reviews, I came away with the feeling I was seeing the same thing as on Amazon, which is that customers don’t always realize what they’re ordering. We, as designers, should never mimic a texture and then highlight the appearance of that texture in the title. I now appreciate those little flags Zazzle places on our products such as there being no real lace or metal or whatever. Either the customer doesn’t notice this or doesn’t believe it.
Then there are those customers who don’t understand that the delivery service and Zazzle aren’t the least connected. At least on Amazon, the customers know how awful delivery can be.
But how is it that two customers can buy the same product and have opposite reactions to it? Expectations?
Most important to us is that customers often don’t know we are not the creators of the product. The change from “designer” to “creator” was one of Zazzle’s worst decisions. Even if this hadn’t been done, we probably shouldn’t be given as much emphasis because it leads to customers believing they’re buying from us. Really, do we need our names up in lights? Why should we be blamed for the quality of the product? Do we blame Amazon for the quality of a skillet? Nope. But here, we can be blamed for the quality of a binder.